Yesterday Jamie and I set out on a quest - to pick up a gold bracelet for ma mere. It took us from the right bank to the left bank from the marais to some unknown territory west of Charles De Gaulle star. Along the way we had many adventures. It rained, a flock baby pigeons ate out of my hand - thank god for purel, Jamie and I became separated.
There were also mini victories. I found the mustard shop, La Maille. We saw a very cool public art exhibition at the Tuilleries. And finally, alone, and tired with foot pain - I found the shop with the gold bracelet. The real reason I could not find it was that my father had sent me an incorrect spelling and so I google mapped the wrong place. It is a beautiful bracelet though - and I took some nice picts with my nikon fe2 (velvia 100).
Meanwhile, Paul lay home, sicken by Napoleon's revenge. Although he was able to work up the strength to go across town to the Agnes B store on the left bank. Paul's quest is to visit every Agnes B shop.
The day ended with a sumptuous dinner in a Persian restaurant near the Beaubourg and a walk around the Marais looking for Finkelstainz deli (or whatever).
Today more flaneuring on left bank and perhaps the Palais De Tokyo exhibit (perhaps Pomp. exhibit)
Sunday, October 11, 2009
Friday, October 9, 2009
Nighty Night
Here's to getting some sleep tonight! I am shot. This morning started with breakfast at the bastille, where we silently protested the corrupt aristocracy and proclaimed equalite liberte fraternite- and ate croissants. Then I was induced to take a jog with Jamie. We ran along various side streets from the place des voyges (approx) to the Beaubourg then over to the Seine and across the Seine to Il de La Cite = where we caught a glimpse of Notre Dame, then back through the Bastille and through the place des voyges back to the hotel. It was a great run and helped revive my limbs after 4 days of travel.
Once back at the hotel, Paul informed me that he found another - better - hotel. 13Bit is a company of sybarites. Last night when we checked in, we were utterly horrified at the hotel and began a frantic search to find another reasonably priced hotel or perhaps craigslist share. So Paul finding a hotel was a great relief. This is one of the reasons it is so great to work with Paul. This was excellent news as our current hotel seemed like a flop house and i essential huddled on a chair in the middle of my room trying not to touch anything (or to let anything touch me) .
We packed up and in 10 min were out of the Hotel Saintonge - and on our way to the hotel Du Vieux Marais. As I learned from the fb responses to my twitter post - there are a few of you out in internet land that also like the Marais. Yes, the Marais is great.
After showering we went to lunch in the Marais where a very nice waiter humored by conversing with us in french. Then we made a pillgrammage to the Mariages Freres tea house, the Agnes B for mens, and took in some window shopping and people watching. We walked a big loop from the marais to the place des victories to the louvre, then chateles then back to the hotel. then internet for an hour and made some stoopid option trades and finally ate dinner.
Blog posts with itinerary litnies are boriing -I understand - but I am tired and hopefully tomorrow with my 8 hours of sleep I will be able to post something more enlightening
Once back at the hotel, Paul informed me that he found another - better - hotel. 13Bit is a company of sybarites. Last night when we checked in, we were utterly horrified at the hotel and began a frantic search to find another reasonably priced hotel or perhaps craigslist share. So Paul finding a hotel was a great relief. This is one of the reasons it is so great to work with Paul. This was excellent news as our current hotel seemed like a flop house and i essential huddled on a chair in the middle of my room trying not to touch anything (or to let anything touch me) .
We packed up and in 10 min were out of the Hotel Saintonge - and on our way to the hotel Du Vieux Marais. As I learned from the fb responses to my twitter post - there are a few of you out in internet land that also like the Marais. Yes, the Marais is great.
After showering we went to lunch in the Marais where a very nice waiter humored by conversing with us in french. Then we made a pillgrammage to the Mariages Freres tea house, the Agnes B for mens, and took in some window shopping and people watching. We walked a big loop from the marais to the place des victories to the louvre, then chateles then back to the hotel. then internet for an hour and made some stoopid option trades and finally ate dinner.
Blog posts with itinerary litnies are boriing -I understand - but I am tired and hopefully tomorrow with my 8 hours of sleep I will be able to post something more enlightening
Thursday, October 8, 2009
Creer une blog
Is it une or un ?
Finally got into Paris after about 4 hours on various trains through the benelux. Last night I had a fun evening eating fried mushrooms in Eschede, reading 'The globalization of water' and googling the history of the netherlands and the linguistic history of dutch. Dutch means some think like low german (german of the lowlands - neider means low). There was an interesting graph showing the relationship between Danish, Swedish, and Norwegian. Danish and Norwegian share vocabulary but not phonology (same words sounding different) while Danish and Swedish share phonology but not vocabulary (sound alike but mean different things). This of course brings me to my pet obession - Finnish - a linguistic isolate (totally unrelated to the other germanic languaes)- and so obviously a holdover from our alien forbearers who seeded our planet (JK :)
The doc interviews went smashingly. We learned a lot - and we want to go and shoot some dried up river beds. Also Paul and I discussed the idea of next time interviewing people for two days. On day one have the first meeting and wow them with our fantastic conversational skills and personal hygine, and day two get into the heart wrenching interview.
The Malawi ISP is STILL not working properly - although this will hopefully be fixed tomorrow - The UNICEF Malawi crew is on the case. I'm trying to push off the field work another week - arg!
We got into to Paris too late to eat. I am dehydrated and carbohydrated - I hope my room does not have bed bugs - I have fond memories of staying in Paris as a college student and my roommate getting scabies - yuck - i am too old for scabies. I am super exciting of getting up tomorrow - doing some tai chi in the place des voyges and eating croissant and cappucino and dipping my croissant into my cappucino just like Proust did. Ahhh ... Paris.
Finally got into Paris after about 4 hours on various trains through the benelux. Last night I had a fun evening eating fried mushrooms in Eschede, reading 'The globalization of water' and googling the history of the netherlands and the linguistic history of dutch. Dutch means some think like low german (german of the lowlands - neider means low). There was an interesting graph showing the relationship between Danish, Swedish, and Norwegian. Danish and Norwegian share vocabulary but not phonology (same words sounding different) while Danish and Swedish share phonology but not vocabulary (sound alike but mean different things). This of course brings me to my pet obession - Finnish - a linguistic isolate (totally unrelated to the other germanic languaes)- and so obviously a holdover from our alien forbearers who seeded our planet (JK :)
The doc interviews went smashingly. We learned a lot - and we want to go and shoot some dried up river beds. Also Paul and I discussed the idea of next time interviewing people for two days. On day one have the first meeting and wow them with our fantastic conversational skills and personal hygine, and day two get into the heart wrenching interview.
The Malawi ISP is STILL not working properly - although this will hopefully be fixed tomorrow - The UNICEF Malawi crew is on the case. I'm trying to push off the field work another week - arg!
We got into to Paris too late to eat. I am dehydrated and carbohydrated - I hope my room does not have bed bugs - I have fond memories of staying in Paris as a college student and my roommate getting scabies - yuck - i am too old for scabies. I am super exciting of getting up tomorrow - doing some tai chi in the place des voyges and eating croissant and cappucino and dipping my croissant into my cappucino just like Proust did. Ahhh ... Paris.
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
Enschede En-ska-day
I am here FINALLY in Enschede. It took 4 trains from Antwerp to get here - but I'm here and looking for stroop wafflen. This is all to shoot interview with the founders of the Water Footprint concept - Derk and Arjhen. I told Paul we cannot have any talking heads in this documentary, which immediately caused Paul to argue with me and swear to make the entire doc talking heads. 'Why are we going to Enschede and shooting these people if not to have talking heads.' Good point, for research - I say and to start building relationships with people in this field. I was also hoping to maybe get a water field trip out of this -but we had to reschedule our interviews so they all take place in one day - making a field trip on this trip impossible. We can still do interesting things with talking heads but I would like it for either voice overs or dramatic content - I basically want more visual content than verbal content, I want some compelling drama, why is this a documentary and not an interview, book, podcast, lecture, or something else (laser light show).
In our first doc, Video Out I though it would be interesting to some how tell the story of VJing by producing a VJ type movie -this did not happen - but I think we made a compelling movie. With Lumia I had no structural asperations - I just wanted to make a second movie. The interesting thing about lumia was that it was a story about a piece of history and an artform that has no history, so it was an exercise in constructing a story and constructing a narrative. In retrospect it might have been interesting to make a Roshimon doc (I am using lots of Roshimon analogies lately) about the subjective nature of documentaries and histories in general - have different histories of light art and thus comment not only on Lumia but on documentary filmmaking- DEEP! too bad I just thought of that. Perhaps I should have been blogging while we made Lumia.
Then we made two features - The Discrete Charm of the Hipster Class (aka game theory, aka the system). This is still out has festivals - it does not seem to have the festival success as Lumia and Video Out - However I think it is a MUCH BETTER MOVIE! I think the reason for a poor festival run is 1) No name actors 2) strange format. We made DCHC as a bunch of very loosely related vignettes about games. All kinds of games: mind games, video games, games of chance etc. It was sort of unconventional, but I thought it was different and engaging.
Now we are finishing up our feature narrative about a indian financial analyst who people think is the messiah- its a comedy.
But about the water documentary... what will it look like. I am not sure. We may even end up making the documentary about the history of measurement (the water footprint being another type of measurement). This is a serious issue - we are using up the non renewable resources of our planet. There are other questions - who is being most affected by the problems of sustainability, what are their stories, what are the groups funding methods like the water footprint, carbon footprint, eco footprint - what are their stories. All these measures are couching the problem of sustainability in in the language of mathematics. This is the language of epistemic superiority (in the 21st). This is opposed to the language of ethics (or perhaps religion) that some instinctively feel is the domain of sustainability - we have a moral obligation not to destroy our environment - and we could probably look to different 'theories' utilitarianism etc. to defend this. The metrics of sustainability also appeal to the semiotics of economics. Economics is the king of policy, perhaps similar to sophistry (given a bad rap by socrates) in the Greek Agora. Economics drives policy. I hope that the efforts of the metricicians (mispelled neologisim - you heard it here first folks) results in large scale change. It is more than a mental game, it is really about the future existence of the human species. So what will the water documentary look like? I'll tell you when we get some more interviews.
Tonight I am finisihing Arjen's tomb I have to finish their tomb - The Globalization of Water - which I cannot start until I finish obsessively compulsively reading The Philosophy of Motion Pictures. Hopefully I will start on that tonight.
Also in Antwerp we we stumbled upon this beautiful church: http://www.aviewoncities.com/antwerp/cathedral.htm.
Ok feeling jet lag brain freeze - must log off
In our first doc, Video Out I though it would be interesting to some how tell the story of VJing by producing a VJ type movie -this did not happen - but I think we made a compelling movie. With Lumia I had no structural asperations - I just wanted to make a second movie. The interesting thing about lumia was that it was a story about a piece of history and an artform that has no history, so it was an exercise in constructing a story and constructing a narrative. In retrospect it might have been interesting to make a Roshimon doc (I am using lots of Roshimon analogies lately) about the subjective nature of documentaries and histories in general - have different histories of light art and thus comment not only on Lumia but on documentary filmmaking- DEEP! too bad I just thought of that. Perhaps I should have been blogging while we made Lumia.
Then we made two features - The Discrete Charm of the Hipster Class (aka game theory, aka the system). This is still out has festivals - it does not seem to have the festival success as Lumia and Video Out - However I think it is a MUCH BETTER MOVIE! I think the reason for a poor festival run is 1) No name actors 2) strange format. We made DCHC as a bunch of very loosely related vignettes about games. All kinds of games: mind games, video games, games of chance etc. It was sort of unconventional, but I thought it was different and engaging.
Now we are finishing up our feature narrative about a indian financial analyst who people think is the messiah- its a comedy.
But about the water documentary... what will it look like. I am not sure. We may even end up making the documentary about the history of measurement (the water footprint being another type of measurement). This is a serious issue - we are using up the non renewable resources of our planet. There are other questions - who is being most affected by the problems of sustainability, what are their stories, what are the groups funding methods like the water footprint, carbon footprint, eco footprint - what are their stories. All these measures are couching the problem of sustainability in in the language of mathematics. This is the language of epistemic superiority (in the 21st). This is opposed to the language of ethics (or perhaps religion) that some instinctively feel is the domain of sustainability - we have a moral obligation not to destroy our environment - and we could probably look to different 'theories' utilitarianism etc. to defend this. The metrics of sustainability also appeal to the semiotics of economics. Economics is the king of policy, perhaps similar to sophistry (given a bad rap by socrates) in the Greek Agora. Economics drives policy. I hope that the efforts of the metricicians (mispelled neologisim - you heard it here first folks) results in large scale change. It is more than a mental game, it is really about the future existence of the human species. So what will the water documentary look like? I'll tell you when we get some more interviews.
Tonight I am finisihing Arjen's tomb I have to finish their tomb - The Globalization of Water - which I cannot start until I finish obsessively compulsively reading The Philosophy of Motion Pictures. Hopefully I will start on that tonight.
Also in Antwerp we we stumbled upon this beautiful church: http://www.aviewoncities.com/antwerp/cathedral.htm.
Ok feeling jet lag brain freeze - must log off
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
Blog Marken or something
I am a bit loopy from jet lag. My internet is a bit slow - BUT faster than Lilongwe. I am sitting in the lovely Banks Hotel in the sort of SoHo of Antwerp. I have already had some Belgan waffles - yum! 13Bit is having deep conversations in beautiful cafe lobby of the Banks Hotel, but truly I am too tired to follow. My mind is wondering why the F*#$k the dow is going up (I am long QID). That is about all my mind can do right now, due to jet lag. I need to do some action script for a carbon footprint web project, and attempt to log into the malawi server (Malawi UNICEF changed Internet Service Providers, but I am enjoying a great email relationship with the new Malawi Ministry of Health Webmasters. I also need to finish updating the website for ChangProjects - and other things - wow I'm tired now.
I am reading Noel Carroll's The Philosophy of Motion Pictures. I really enjoyed Carroll's book on criticism - which is one of the few lucid discussions of the philosophy of art and criticism. What is it about a film that makes it art? Or, as Pirsig would say, what is Quality in film? Hopefully I'll figure something out before the water footprint interviews this week. Next post from Holland.
Now I am going to sell all my stock.
I am reading Noel Carroll's The Philosophy of Motion Pictures. I really enjoyed Carroll's book on criticism - which is one of the few lucid discussions of the philosophy of art and criticism. What is it about a film that makes it art? Or, as Pirsig would say, what is Quality in film? Hopefully I'll figure something out before the water footprint interviews this week. Next post from Holland.
Now I am going to sell all my stock.
Friday, October 2, 2009
Is Backgammon Broken
I distinctly remember learning backgammon while on a family vacation. Every year we would vacation to the same place and I would watch the old men (old they seemed) play with these leather bound sets with leather bound dice cups. It was all very tactile and I can close my eyes and remember the smell the beach and the yummy hot dogs.
It has been 20+ years since I last played backgammon, but I am a gamer. The other day I decided to play backgammon on my iphone instead of chess. I was trying to remember the rules, learning from my mistakes as I went along - and then I got my backgammon mojo back.
I think backgammon is much easier than chess. At least easier for me. I think this is because there are limited backgammon strategies that work. If your opponent lacks skill, you dont even have to take his/her strategy into account. In chess, you really cannot avoid acting or reacting to your opponents moves. (Maybe this points to my chess weakness since really you should be acting not reacting)
The chance element, the dice roll, indicates a weakness with the game core mechanic. It means you cannot play the game on strategy alone - that to keep the game interesting you need to include chance. I wonder if you explicitly use probability to guide your moves if you could 'break the game'. Chance, although a weakness, is not a game killer. If the game is long enough I suppose the law of large numbers will remove any bias. The doubling of double rolls, however, really provides an unfair advantage beyond skill.
Is backgammon broken? Perhaps. But the weakness is from the limited strategies, but not because of the chance element.
Let the backgammon savants flame me - I am ready
It has been 20+ years since I last played backgammon, but I am a gamer. The other day I decided to play backgammon on my iphone instead of chess. I was trying to remember the rules, learning from my mistakes as I went along - and then I got my backgammon mojo back.
I think backgammon is much easier than chess. At least easier for me. I think this is because there are limited backgammon strategies that work. If your opponent lacks skill, you dont even have to take his/her strategy into account. In chess, you really cannot avoid acting or reacting to your opponents moves. (Maybe this points to my chess weakness since really you should be acting not reacting)
The chance element, the dice roll, indicates a weakness with the game core mechanic. It means you cannot play the game on strategy alone - that to keep the game interesting you need to include chance. I wonder if you explicitly use probability to guide your moves if you could 'break the game'. Chance, although a weakness, is not a game killer. If the game is long enough I suppose the law of large numbers will remove any bias. The doubling of double rolls, however, really provides an unfair advantage beyond skill.
Is backgammon broken? Perhaps. But the weakness is from the limited strategies, but not because of the chance element.
Let the backgammon savants flame me - I am ready
Thursday, October 1, 2009
More Shots
Yesterday 13Bit interviewed Manny Kirshheimer for a blog,video podcast, future documentary. Manny is a completely independent filmmaker who has been making documentaries for the past 50 years. We spent a fantastic few hours talking to him about the craft in his apartment on the upper west side of manhattan - that he has lived in since 1964! We even got to see a few snippets of Manny's new documentary about war protest prints- it is a visual masterpiece.
I cannot believe that 13Bit is leaving monday for europe. It feel like I just got back and the to do list is growing out of control. I think the Malawi servers are back on line today - so I am going to follow up with that - along with the proposed field training. I am in the midst of putting up a new website and I am considering using django to host the content but I sort of dont want to deal with it Perhaps that is too much complexity for a dinky little site.
I ate too many brussel sprouts yesterday and I am considering a juice fast.
I cannot believe that 13Bit is leaving monday for europe. It feel like I just got back and the to do list is growing out of control. I think the Malawi servers are back on line today - so I am going to follow up with that - along with the proposed field training. I am in the midst of putting up a new website and I am considering using django to host the content but I sort of dont want to deal with it Perhaps that is too much complexity for a dinky little site.
I ate too many brussel sprouts yesterday and I am considering a juice fast.
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